[Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

Sat Oct 21 15:13:18 CDT 2006

Hey - no problem here and you make a very good point.  Applications like these have the ability to help and speed up work immensly ... or make a real mess of things very quickly;-)

Yes, the scripting language that is employed is very simple, even by my standards.

Cheers.

---------------
James Burn BSc, GIS(pg), AScT
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: SCISOFT 
  To: 'JBurn_GIS' ; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 
  Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 1:21 AM
  Subject: RE: [Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

  Sure, James - what you're describing is a keystroke recorder. Incidentally, the banks don't like them! (I'm being dishonest - slightly different technology, since one's overt and the other's being rather naughty). 

  You're right - I shouldn't be lazy and dismiss these things. 

  But since it's just a keystroke recorder, there needs to be a very clear warning that the workflow has to be exactly fitted to the project's components and disposition. So, OK for doing work as you describe: once on a single layer, then repeating the macro 999 times knowing that repeating the keystroke sequence on the next 999 layers is going to be OK. But otherwise - dangerous. 

  And, it doesn't teach anyone anything about scripting - which was what I was more focused on. 

  Sorry to appear rude (well, not as apparently rude as Dimitri Rotow, anyway).

  IL Thomas
  GeoSciSoft  - Perth, Australia

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  From: JBurn_GIS [mailto:jburn_gis at cogeco.ca] 
  Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 11:07 AM
  To: geoscisoft at iinet.net.au; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com
  Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

  Certainly I agree with you, and no, these two programs have no direct access to Manifold's features, nore was it claimed.  However, I would hardly say that this discounts their usefulness, and I certainly wouldn't say that installing them is a waste of time, especially when the install is <10mb and getting up and running is pretty quick and easy.  Why imagine - just do a search and check out their sites to see if would be useful to you.

  From a very simple standpoint (I'm a simple man after all;-), they allow the various events and functions (transforms for example), mouse clicks, click locations (therefore "buttons" clicked), keyboard clicks etc. to be captured and recorded.  These in turn can be strung together and include user input.  To push it a bit further, they can create independant floating menu bars.  

  A simple example.  One of our co-op students (he's the one who introduced me to these) needed to import multiple DWG's into one Manifold project.  Each DWG had numerous layers.  So what?  Here's the kicker - groups of these layers (say all the ones dealing w/ water) needed to be (A) consolidated into one Manifold drawing and (B) the entities in that initial layer needed to be "tagged" in the table with their initial AutoCAD drawing and layer name for reference.

  The manual method (aka - for non-programmers like me) would probably be to open a drawing, ctrl+A, ctrl+C, select the new drawing, ctrl+V, open the table, double click in a selected field, enter the name of the drawing, enter the name of the layer, "enter" to fill the rest of selected records, clear the selection, and delete the initial drawing as it is no longer needed, and then move to the next.  This would have to be done for every layer from every drawing, and we were initially looking at a few hundred layers at least.  Instead, he made a nice "macro" (used QuickMacros app.) that did all of that, set it to "run" and went for lunch;-)  As I mentioned, AutoIT can turn their macro scripts into a self contained .exe (AutoIT not required to run them), which can then be put into a add-in very easily ...

  So while the programs do not have access to the "backend" of how the application works and functions and I certainly am not trying to say that they are the end all and be all ... one could say that they have "frontend" access through the user telling the program what to do and where and how on the screen.  And while I agree that this isn't enough for some - although I know of a few "serious coders" who do make use of these types of applications - we have found that they certianly do have a place and are more then enough for a lot of tedious work or work that needs to be done multiple times.

  So by all means, improve the scripting environment of Manifold, make it easier for non-coders like me to use, give me more tools and less typing ... but until then, I'm happy and satisfied with my little free app.

  Cheers.

  ---------------
  James Burn BSc, GIS(pg), AScT

    ----- Original Message ----- 

    From: SCISOFT 

    To: manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 

    Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 7:31 PM

    Subject: [Manifold-l] macro-makers / scripters

    Re AutoIT and QuickMacros: I just cannot imagine that such a product would have any "access" to the Manifold scripting engine. Tell me if I'm wrong - but I think that even installing these and trying would be a waste of time! 

    As has been indicated many times before, a number of people believe that Manifold needs richer events. Just having some variation of a "macro recorder" isn't enough for many serious coders. A few people whose opinions / comments I respect have made a reasonable case for this, here and on the Manifold Community website. 

    But having script echoing would be good. In contrast to 1 or 2 recent comments, I would predict a very big impact on those who are now very tentative about beginning any Manifold scripting (and the common Manifold answer to any question is "write a script"), by the implementation of an "echoing" function. 

    That's certainly why the MapBasic (MB) scripting language in MapInfo Professional has taken off, over many years - in the "immediate window", users can see the simple statements that have been executed. MB is not so object based, so my guess would be that implementing something equivalent in Manifold might be a little tricky. What is very good about MB is that it has a limited but very useful set of events that allow simple icon-based user-defined tools to be easily created (to sit on a button toolbar). What is very bad about MB is that it has an extremely awkward way of defining forms or dialog boxes (no visual designer). Despite all of that, the user fraternity of MapInfo has created a huge array of user tools, for various specialist purposes. 

    Some of these tools (which are just encapsulated or modularized scripts, put into a compiled package - a MBX file that the GIS itself can run - and sometimes associated with a button on a user a toolbar, or a menu) are very simple, others are elaborate and part of very sophisticated work flows and have been supplemented by other extensions. 

    Some of that is possible within the Manifold Add-Ins model. 

    As we all know, Manifold provides a lot more, for free, than MapInfo does. MB is a significant extra cost (more than the total cost of a mid-range Manifold license). 

    Manifold Net Ltd may regard MapInfo as an insignificant player (or is it that some people have too much ESRI focus?) in their market segment, but there are features of MI that I would like to see adopted within Manifold. Over the past 2 or 3 years I have occasionally espoused these, but I'm a lone voice I think. 

    IL Thomas
    GeoSciSoft  - Perth, Australia

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

    From: manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com [mailto:manifold-l-bounces at lists.directionsmag.com] On Behalf Of Linus F Upson III
    Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 3:54 AM
    To: JBurn_GIS; Simon Linder; Dimitri Rotow; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com
    Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

    I'll try AutoIT but I really think my scripter would be based on Manifold natives (or scripts) which operates similar to ERDAS Imagine's query machine but has a built-in "preview" capability (like PhotoShop's) for both tabular and spatial 'tentative results,'  which in turn are actively updated as the script is assembled and tested.  

      ----- Original Message ----- 

      From: JBurn_GIS 

      To: Linus F Upson III ; Simon Linder ; Dimitri Rotow ; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 

      Sent: Friday, 20 October, 2006 12:40 AM

      Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

      While I'm not sure I agree w/ Simon's other points - we have high school co-op students with no former GIS training figureing those things out within a day or so; I agree that a macro maker/editor would be grand.  I think I suggested it to sales in the form of a new kind of component.  However, in the meantime I would suggest you look at either AutoIT (free) or QuickMacros (I think its ~$30).  Both are program independent "macro makers".  AutoIT will even make them into a nice executable ... which could be added to Manifold as an add-in;-)

      Cheers.

      ---------------
      James Burn BSc, GIS(pg), AScT

        ----- Original Message ----- 

        From: Linus F Upson III 

        To: Simon Linder ; Dimitri Rotow ; manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com 

        Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 12:06 AM

        Subject: Re: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

            Amen.  The theme of the next version of Manifold should be "solutions" 
        and a click & move scripter + library based on existing functions.  But then 
        these have been suggested before.  Linus

        ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: "Simon Linder" <pslinder at earthlink.net>
        To: "Dimitri Rotow" <dar at manifold.net>; <manifold-l at lists.directionsmag.com>
        Sent: Thursday, 19 October, 2006 11:09 AM
        Subject: RE: [Manifold-l] Manifold reference clients

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